{"id":653,"date":"2016-07-29T19:59:57","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T23:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/?post_type=chapter&p=653"},"modified":"2016-11-21T15:40:45","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T20:40:45","slug":"%c2%a745-noun-forming-suffixes-in-english","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/chapter\/%c2%a745-noun-forming-suffixes-in-english\/","title":{"raw":"\u00a745. Noun-forming Suffixes in English","rendered":"\u00a745. Noun-forming Suffixes in English"},"content":{"raw":"

As the title suggests, this chapter is almost exactly the reverse of Chapter 5\u2014but less complicated. There you encountered a wide variety of Latin suffixes that can turn nouns into adjectives. Now you will meet a much smaller number of Latin suffixes that convert adjectives into ABSTRACT NOUNS<\/strong>.[footnote] Remember that an abstract noun denotes a state or quality. The adjective\u00a0good<\/em> is a descriptive word, used to modify an English noun (a\u00a0good<\/em> book, a\u00a0good<\/em> woman); the abstract noun\u00a0goodness<\/em> denotes the quality of being good.[\/footnote] Again, you will probably find the Latin material easier to understand if you think first how English deals with this problem when Germanic roots and suffixes are involved. How are native English adjectives turned into nouns?<\/p>\r\n

First, let us recall something that we learned about adjectives in Chapter 4. In English, as in Latin and in many other languages, an adjective can be used as a noun without any change of form at all. We saw examples like \u201cthe highest good<\/i>\u201d and a \u201chappy medium<\/i>\u201d (\u00a724<\/a>). Adjectival nouns such as these may refer concretely to people (\u201cthe bad<\/i> and the beautiful<\/i>\u201d) or to things (\u201cMoney is a necessary evil<\/i>\u201d). No suffix is required to create that kind of noun, which can be described as a simple adjective used substantively. In contrast, we are now looking for words that have been changed in form\u2014so-called \u201cderived\u201d nouns.<\/p>\r\n

What suffixes, then, does the English language use to turn adjectives into nouns? To find out, take a few common Germanic adjectives, such as good, wicked, fat, short, hard, flat, broad, wide, long, high, free, and wise. <\/i>From this list you will soon identify three noun-forming suffixes, of which the first is by far the most common:<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\n
1.\u00a0 Adjective + suffix -NESS<\/strong>\r\ngood-ness, wicked-ness, fat-ness, short-ness, hard-ness, flat-ness<\/em>\r\n2.\u00a0 Adjective + suffix -TH<\/strong>\r\nbread-th<\/em>, wid-th<\/em>, leng-th<\/em>, heigh-t <\/em>(originally high-th<\/em>)\r\n3.\u00a0 Adjective + suffix -DOM<\/strong>\r\nfree-dom, wis-dom<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\nApart from a few quirks of spelling and pronunciation (broad<\/i> > breadth<\/i>, wise<\/i> > wisdom<\/i>), there doesn\u2019t seem to be anything very difficult or complicated here. Even the meaning of the suffix seems to be identical in every case\u2014\u201cthe state or quality of being -----\u201d. Fortunately, Latin noun-forming suffixes are just about as easy and straightforward.","rendered":"

As the title suggests, this chapter is almost exactly the reverse of Chapter 5\u2014but less complicated. There you encountered a wide variety of Latin suffixes that can turn nouns into adjectives. Now you will meet a much smaller number of Latin suffixes that convert adjectives into ABSTRACT NOUNS<\/strong>.[1]<\/sup><\/a> Again, you will probably find the Latin material easier to understand if you think first how English deals with this problem when Germanic roots and suffixes are involved. How are native English adjectives turned into nouns?<\/p>\n

First, let us recall something that we learned about adjectives in Chapter 4. In English, as in Latin and in many other languages, an adjective can be used as a noun without any change of form at all. We saw examples like \u201cthe highest good<\/i>\u201d and a \u201chappy medium<\/i>\u201d (\u00a724<\/a>). Adjectival nouns such as these may refer concretely to people (\u201cthe bad<\/i> and the beautiful<\/i>\u201d) or to things (\u201cMoney is a necessary evil<\/i>\u201d). No suffix is required to create that kind of noun, which can be described as a simple adjective used substantively. In contrast, we are now looking for words that have been changed in form\u2014so-called \u201cderived\u201d nouns.<\/p>\n

What suffixes, then, does the English language use to turn adjectives into nouns? To find out, take a few common Germanic adjectives, such as good, wicked, fat, short, hard, flat, broad, wide, long, high, free, and wise. <\/i>From this list you will soon identify three noun-forming suffixes, of which the first is by far the most common:<\/p>\n

\n
1.\u00a0 Adjective + suffix -NESS<\/strong>
\ngood-ness, wicked-ness, fat-ness, short-ness, hard-ness, flat-ness<\/em>
\n2.\u00a0 Adjective + suffix -TH<\/strong>
\nbread-th<\/em>, wid-th<\/em>, leng-th<\/em>, heigh-t <\/em>(originally high-th<\/em>)
\n3.\u00a0 Adjective + suffix -DOM<\/strong>
\nfree-dom, wis-dom<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Apart from a few quirks of spelling and pronunciation (broad<\/i> > breadth<\/i>, wise<\/i> > wisdom<\/i>), there doesn\u2019t seem to be anything very difficult or complicated here. Even the meaning of the suffix seems to be identical in every case\u2014\u201cthe state or quality of being —–\u201d. Fortunately, Latin noun-forming suffixes are just about as easy and straightforward.<\/p>\n

  1. Remember that an abstract noun denotes a state or quality. The adjective\u00a0good<\/em> is a descriptive word, used to modify an English noun (a\u00a0good<\/em> book, a\u00a0good<\/em> woman); the abstract noun\u00a0goodness<\/em> denotes the quality of being good. ↵<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":20,"menu_order":1,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"Chapter 6: Turning Latin Adjectives into Nouns","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[52],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-653","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":582,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1854,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/653\/revisions\/1854"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/582"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/653\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greeklatinroots\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}